What would the 100,000 Australaians who died defending our right to live in dignity think of our military having to cozy-up to the corrupt officers and undisiplined ranks known as the Indonesian Army?

It is important to recognise that sentimental western political activists encourage some oppressed people to place false hope in idealistic resistance.

The people of Kashmir and Palestine for instance are infinitely worse for the foreign encouragement of idealistic resistance. In East Timor, the results of armed resistance were dreadful for the Timorese people. Their ultimate independence is a good, but the human harms preceding it cannot be compensated.

The treatment of West Papuans in Indonesian colonialism may be dreadful, but idealism is not a practical framework for response.

healthwatcher, the Australian Army over recent decades have developed joint projects with the Indonesians and engage in exchanges of people to develop mutual knowledge. This has the huge benefit that SOME Australians actually know the people you are talking about, and through dialogue have the basis of understanding.

It is important to recognise ChrisPer uses the term "sentimental western political activists" to discredit an informed writer who used careful consideration for his article.

ChrisPer glosses over facts pretending West Papua is a victim of "Indonesian colonialism" which keeps the issue at arms length from "sentimental" westerners.

West Papua is a victim of U.S. and Indonesian military colonialism, it was Chevron & Mobil who found the Papuan Gold & Copper in 1936; it was Rockefeller's son-in-law who told the Freeport corporation to go into West Papua in 1961; McGeorge Bundy & Robert Kormer who told Kennedy that he should force the Netherlands to sell the people of West Papua to Indonesia to protect Australia & the U.S. from communism; and it was General Suharto who sold a Gold & Copper mining license to Freeport in 1967.

The people who STOP the U.S. Congress in 2005 getting their questions about WEST PAPUA into the U.S. Foreign Affairs bill was the Bechtel corporation and the rest of the members of the "US Indonesia Society" lobby.

You have to understand who you are dealing with.

You have to understand what motivates people.

And Chris you need to understand that the Papuan people have never stop protesting about the New York Agreement and the resulting mess.
http://wpik.org/Src/SMH/19620812.gif

What is happening in Papua is rape of the environment and genocide of the people.
But who cares?

In 1961 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the United States had said it had not attended the inauguration of the West New Guinea Council "for our own good and valid reasons."

http://wpik.org/Src/SMH.html

What was the United State's "own good and valid reasons." ?

I can think of several billion dollars worth of Freeport reason for the U.S. to wish to pretend West Papua could be traded between nations without the people's consent; but it would be nice to hear the US Dept. of State explanation of this.